Nine thoughts on Mets’ jarring Brandon Nimmo-Marcus Semien trade

The New York Mets commenced what may be a large offseason overhaul Sunday night, trading their longest-tenured player, Brandon Nimmo, to the Texas Rangers for Marcus Semien. Nimmo has five years and $101.25 million left on the eight-year contract he signed with former general manager Billy Eppler ahead of the 2023 season. Semien has three years and $72 million remaining on the seven-year deal he inked with Texas ahead of the 2022 season.

On the one hand, this is a trade of subpar contracts. Trading for the back half of a significant free-agent deal is never advisable unless you’re sending the same thing back the other way. On the other hand, Nimmo and Semien are extremely useful players in the here and now.

There’s a lot to work through in the immediate aftermath. Here are some occasionally muddled thoughts …

1. Semien fits the roster better

In a vacuum, Nimmo was a better player than Semien last year, and Nimmo is 2 1/2 years younger than Semien. But Nimmo’s defensive regression over the past two years was exacerbated when the Mets added Juan Soto on a 15-year deal to play the other corner outfield spot. New York could survive for only so long with a pair of subpar corner outfielders defensively, and the two were only going to see their range diminish as they aged.

Semien, though older than Nimmo, has remained a sparkling defender at an up-the-middle spot at second base. President of baseball operations David Stearns repeatedly emphasized improving the Mets’ “run prevention,” and fixing the right side of the infield was a significant priority for New York. Semien goes a long way toward doing that.

2. Can Semien rebound offensively?

The stats on the back of the baseball card for Semien were rough in 2025: a .230/.305/.364 slash line for his worst OPS since he became an established big leaguer a decade ago with the Chicago White Sox. Only nine players qualified for the batting title last season with a worse OPS than Semien’s .669.

It’s been a major drop-off since 2023, when Semien finished third in the MVP balloting and helped lead the Rangers to their first championship.

But let’s take a look under the hood at those two years.

Yes, Semien was worse in 2025 than in 2023; those numbers are moving in the wrong direction. But he wasn’t so far gone in a lot of the important offensive metrics to think he deserved falling off a cliff the way he did. Is Semien likely to contend for an MVP again at age 35 next season? No. Is it reasonable to think he can be better at the plate than he was last season? Yes.

3. The stat that scared me about Nimmo’s defensive future

Now, let’s look at how two different players have aged the last few years athletically.

This is a big part of the reason Semien has remained a stalwart defender and Nimmo has gone downhill with the glove.

4. The core wasn’t good enough

The Mets entered the Stearns era in 2024 wondering how good they could be around their long-term core of Nimmo, Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil. And despite a memorable run to the National League Championship Series that fall, that core was not good enough over the larger sample of two 162-game seasons. New York won 89 and 83 games; the total of 172 finished sixth in the NL in that span (behind the Los Angeles Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies, Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego Padres and Chicago Cubs) and 11th in the majors.

At some point in the final stretch of the 2025 season, whether or not the Mets made the postseason became irrelevant to how the front office would judge the group. New York played too poorly for too long to redeem itself just by getting in, which of course it didn’t anyway.

5. The old guard is changing

Nimmo was the Mets’ longest-tenured player, with 1,066 games with the club dating to 2016. Next in line now is McNeil, with 923 games since coming up in the second half of the 2018 season. He was on the trading block even before the Mets acquired a veteran at his position in this deal.

After McNeil, Alonso and Edwin Díaz debuted with the club to start 2019; both are free agents who might move on. Then it’s David Peterson, who debuted in 2020, and it’s not farfetched to imagine him being traded this winter either.

6. What’s next?

This is pretty silly sitting here at No. 6, since it’s really the most important part of the equation (and thus something we’ll devote more space to soon). But trading Nimmo opens a large hole in the corner outfield in a market that isn’t especially replete with options — after, of course, the big names, such as Kyle Tucker and Cody Bellinger.

7. Nimmo leaves a solid if not everlasting legacy with the Mets

How good was Nimmo as a Met? I hopped over to Baseball-Reference’s franchise page to look up some rankings, and there’s his picture among the top 24 players in team history by WAR, nestled between Keith Hernandez and Mike Piazza among position players and ahead of Alonso. (If you think that’s just a Baseball-Reference thing, FanGraphs has Nimmo ahead of all three in WAR.)

Nimmo leaves the Mets with the ninth-most plate appearances in team history. He ranks sixth in runs scored, eighth in on-base percentage, ninth in homers and 10th in total bases and doubles.

Without a championship ring, that’s not enough to get his number onto the Citi Field façade, which might have been a possibility had he played out the next five years with the club. But Nimmo should become a member of the Mets Hall of Fame and go down as one of their best homegrown players ever. Not bad for a kid from Wyoming.

8. Nimmo was a stand-up player to cover

If you’ll permit one inside-baseball paragraph: I’ve reported on the majors for 17 years in two major markets, and Nimmo is as good as they come to cover. He understands what a reporter’s job is and respects our efforts to do it, even when it leads to some unpleasant questions. I can’t recall a player as willing to engage on the topic of his own slump as Nimmo was. My lasting memory of him as a Met will be the tears in his eyes in left field as the team closed out the Division Series over the Phillies in 2024 and what he said afterward in the clubhouse: “It’s everything I ever wanted when I got drafted here.”

9. One leftover from a story I didn’t get to write

Back in August, just after Alonso had set the Mets’ franchise home run record, I asked Nimmo about his own record chase: He was within a few long balls of surpassing former Met John Buck as the majors’ all-time leader in home runs among those born in Wyoming.

He chuckled before thinking about it. And then he said this:

“That would be really cool to own that record. It’s where I grew up; it always holds a special place in my heart, and I would like to set a new standard for players growing up in Wyoming.

“It gives hope. There used to be a stigma with some cold-weather states — Wyoming especially, with the lack of population and the competition in baseball. I saw something where little brothers tend to be a little bit more athletic and stronger than their older brothers. And it’s because they watch their older brothers, and they learn from them.

“When somebody from Wyoming watches me and sees he’s from Wyoming too; he did it, and there’s a way. Somebody from Wyoming is going to look at that and say I can do better. The goal of breaking records is to push for the next person to try and be better than you. That was something for me. I always looked at my older brother. He had the records for the program I grew up in. I always looked at it as, ‘I love my brother, but I want to be better.’ And I did — I broke a lot of his records. What I’m looking is to inspire someone to take that path and to go and break the records that I’m hopefully going to set for someone born in Wyoming.”

I didn’t write that story because, well, the Mets were plummeting in the standings and a lighthearted, feel-good story was not exactly going to click with our readers. But I thought it was a cool perspective.

For what it’s worth, Nimmo broke Buck’s record with his tying three-run homer at Wrigley Field in the final week of September.